On Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:34 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Where do you stand? How many of the games that you played this year
were released in 2024, and how did that compare in playtime to any
older games you played?

My most played games on Steam are from 2000-2010 or so. But I am also
playing a bunch of freebies and I don't really have any idea when they
came out. I doubt any of them came out in 2024.

I never played a 2024 game in 2024 I don't think. I will likely not
play a 2025 game in 2025. I don't buy games from the big studios
anymore. They don't make games that I like. I do buy indie titles, but
even then, I buy them when they are on sale. And then they sit in my
library until I get around to playing them.

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On Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:04:11 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

I played an unusual amount of new games this year. Well, unusual for
recent years; back in the day it felt like I was getting and playing a
brand new game every week. But for a good while, until 2024, I was
focussing more on older titles.

But this year I spent a good amount of time (and money!) on games
released in 2024; 7 games to be exact (or 9 if you include the
truck-sim expansion DLC), all of which I played to completion. That
number goes higher if you include games "less than a year old when I
bought and played them" (such as the "System Shock Remaster", which
released in May 2023 but I played in January 2024). If you include all
of those, my total of "brand new" games goes up to almost a quarter of
_all_ the games I played in 2024.

The System Shock remaster is on sale right now. It is in my wishlist
and I am thinking of getting it because I am in the mood to actually
play it. I would mix it in with all the giveaway games I got from you,
but that *still* will be sometime in 2025 for a game that came out in
2023!

That is as close as I could potentially come to playing a game in its
release year. I don't count freebies in this, I mean games I actually purchased.

Of course, all this discounts all the games I fired up, puttered
around with for twenty or fifty minutes, then put away again. I do
that with a lot of my older DOS and Playstation games and never list
them in my monthly recounts since I don't consider those games really >"played". And then there's stuff like Doom; over the course of 2024, I >probably put in ten or twenty hours of play with that game, but it was
thirty minutes here and an hour there over the course of a year. That
happens with older games like "Civilization 1" or "Master of Orion"
too. It's a lot of "I can't think of what else to play, so I'll just
fire this old classic up to while away some time until I can think of >something better". It adds up, but doesn't get 'counted'.

I do this as well. When I am in between games, I may fire up Master of
Orion or Master of Magic, or play a random map in Heroes of Might &
Magic 3 until I decide what to play 'for real' so to speak.

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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

Everybody loves new games. That's a truism of the industry; it's
something they depend on and market heavily. Don't miss out, they tell
is; buy the game now before everybody jumps ship to the next big
thing.

Except... apparently that truism isn't quite as true anymore. Steam's
Year in Review shows that only 15% of the total time spent on games
was spent on games released in 2024. More than a third of their time
was spent on games eight or more years old.

The thing is, new game SALES haven't really decreased. But people are >spending more time playing their older titles. And games that -just a >generation ago- would have been declared obsolete and ancient still
have quite a draw to them.

There are all sorts of reasons for this and, honestly, I think that
the sheer number of bots grinding games like TeamFortress and
CounterStrike for gambling tokens probably skews the numbers quite a
bit. But the popularity of SteamDeck, the huge influx of free or >highly-discounted older games, and the malicious monetization of
modern titles probably are all influential too.

I certainly have no gripe with this; I've been championing older games
for years! Go older games; strut your stuff! These new-fangled
releases ain't got nothin' on you!

Where do you stand? How many of the games that you played this year
were released in 2024, and how did that compare in playtime to any
older games you played?

The Newest games I purchased this year:
System Shock Remaster (about 2/3rds of the way through I stopped, will
pick up again at some point)

Mechwarrior5 Mercs (did I think about 4 missions, then I no longer had a functional mech, since it's all swarms of enemy attacks vs single you)

CyberPunk2077 (Have not even opened it)

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered (have not played yet, gonna have to get in
the mood for those controls)



Games I actually played:
Black Desert Online
Star Trek Online
Star Wars: The Old Republic
City of Heroes
Grim Dawn
Borderlands 2+3

Xocyll

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On Tue, 24 Dec 2024 10:18:31 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

My first read-through of that comment was that you were firing up
"Master of Orion 3" as your go-to game, and my opinion of you dropped >drastically. Then I read more closely and I very much approve of your
choices ;-)

I never bothered with the third game due to the poor reviews when it
released. I always have the original MOO installed, and yes, that is
the one I was referring to.

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Games actually released this year, probably only two:
Indika
Indiana Jones
I can't recall what led to buying Indika, some urge to try a new indie
game? Indiana Jones has been a major surprise though; I'd never have
purchased it at the retail price, but being available via gamepass and the early lauds eased any entry concerns, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit.

Games I've paid full retail for were not in a playable state on launch (cyberpunk & stalker2) but both appear to have made major strides (cyberpunk
is quite mature now), and another title I wanted to buy but not at full
retail, Alan Wake 2, is finally discounted and I've bought it: This trend
will continue no doubt: Balking at high release price, or balking at rushed
& unfinished state of titles, and waiting for ~1yr before buying.

My oldest title this year, the 15yr old console title Enslaved: Journey to
the West, I enjoyed immensely

rms

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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

But this year I spent a good amount of time (and money!) on games
released in 2024; 7 games to be exact (or 9 if you include the
truck-sim expansion DLC), all of which I played to completion. That
number goes higher if you include games "less than a year old when I
bought and played them" (such as the "System Shock Remaster", which
released in May 2023 but I played in January 2024). If you include all
of those, my total of "brand new" games goes up to almost a quarter of
_all_ the games I played in 2024.

Damn, I thought the "System Shock Remaster" was a 2024 game. So that
would've been at least one game released this year I've played. Oh well,
it feels like they kinda did it to themselves. As I recall, they
announced a big patch in August of 2023 and then didn't release it until
2024. I had started the game, then waited for that patch and when it
didn't come out I just started playing in late 2023 or early 2024.

What's the stance on big mods though? Thinking of Fallout: London here,
it definitely came out this year but Fallout 4 is almost a decade old
now.

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